


A Merry New Year's Evening

by high_spring_tide



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 00:46:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/high_spring_tide/pseuds/high_spring_tide
Summary: Aziraphale loves the holiday season. Crowley loves it too, for mostly different reasons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes are noted by numbers in parentheses, like this (1), and appear at the bottom of the text.
> 
> Many thanks to windward_shore for footnoting and edits.

In Queen Elizabeth I’s England, gifts were exchanged at New Year’s, rather than at Christmas, and neither Aziraphale nor Crowley had ever bothered to change that tradition. Aziraphale had loved the season of Christmas as it was celebrated when Gloriana had sat on the throne of England. The carolers on the street corners, the candle-lit, frost covered store windows, the glistening icicles and merry, mischievous children. . . Ah, those were the days (1). He liked keeping the old traditions alive, and he also liked the extra week of time to decide what gift to get everyone on his list (2).

Crowley gave gifts at New Year’s for a slightly more obvious reason. Demons don’t celebrate Christmas. They . . . acknowledge it. Specifically, they acknowledge it as one of their greater failures. There _had_ been a plan to foil the Enemy’s scheme, but the entire thing was an intelligence failure of epic proportions, both in the sense that the infernal spy network hadn’t found out about the whole for-unto-you-shall-be-born-a-child business until a few days before the big event (3), and also in the sense that the eventual plan to foil the scheme was, as Crowley put it, “utterly moronic.” The cleverest, most devious demons in Hell--or at least the ones with the most impressive titles--and the best they had been able to come up with had been flooding Bethlehem with traffic and putting big, frustrating No Vacancy signs on all the inns. A good portion of the whole diabolical ranks had looked on in glee as Mary and Joseph and an increasingly sad donkey went from inn to inn looking for someplace with rooms available, and when Crowley had asked what the point of that was supposed to be, he received only blank stares.

“ _Well_ , if there’s nowhere for them to stay, then _maybe_ she’ll decide to _just not have_ the baby,” someone had said, explaining it to him as if he were very stupid. Crowley had then tried to explain that the entire plan appeared to be based around certain fundamental misconceptions about how human pregnancy worked, but no one had wanted to listen (4).

* * *

Nowadays, every year at Christmas Aziraphale would rehearse with the choir of St. Marvin’s. It was one of London’s smaller, shabbier churches, and its choir was made up almost equally of people who’d been nagged into joining by their relatives, and who tended to look anxiously at watches and cell phones a lot; and of people who were convinced that their true destiny was stardom. It was a small choir, and every year an advertisement would go out in the church bulletin inviting newcomers to join specifically for the Christmas services. The director had hoped that a larger choir would be a bit louder, if not better. Instead, every Christmas she wound up with a choir which sounded better than any in London, or the world, for that matter. 

Every year, hundreds would flock to Christmas Eve at St. Marvin’s to hear the news of peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind sung by a choir which, people would say, echoed the voices of the Heavenly Host (5). And every year a few people would show up for a few Sundays after Christmas, after Aziraphale had returned to his cocoa and his books, and realize that the choir actually sounded quite ordinary, and anyway it was awfully early to get up on a weekend and they weren’t a huge fan of that irritating lady and her crying kids in the next pew. 

The regular parishioners of St. Marvin’s, meanwhile, weren’t sure why the choir sounded so much better for a few days every year, but they weren’t going to question it.

* * *

Demons, Crowley included, don’t celebrate Christmas, but Crowley acknowledged it a bit more actively than his colleagues Downstairs. Specifically, he acknowledged it by delivering fruitcakes to everyone in his building. Also, by hanging mistletoe in inconvenient places. It eventually got to the point that the concierge in his building, always stressed around the holiday season, started dreading not just the snow and road salt, the steady stream of visits from tenants’ irritating relatives, and the carolers; but also finding bricks of dried fruit turning up in the damnedest places and people dropping packages all over the place because they’d been checking the ceiling for mistletoe and had walked into a wall. One neighbor always tried to chop the fruitcake into little pieces and wash it down the sink. Another was experimenting with making fruitcake candles. Old Mrs. Tilden in apartment 3b had come up with the best solution, though. She kept offering it to her least favorite  grandnieces until they stopped visiting. Mr. McSwiggans, meanwhile, actually liked the fruitcake, and had written Crowley quite an extensive thank-you note.

The mistletoe had so far cause ninety-four awkward conversations, two hundred forty-three awkward silences, seventeen dropped packages (nine of which had been labelled  _ Fragile _ ), one sprained ankle, nine heated arguments, and one broken-off engagement. Overall, not a record-breaking year, but a good one nonetheless.

* * *

“Pop stars releasing Christmas albums--was that one of yours, or one of ours?” Crowley asked, pouring himself another glass of champagne. They were sitting in the back room of the bookshop, and there were only a few hours of the old year left.

“Difficult to say,” admitted Aziraphale. “It’s wonderful to see the rich and famous adopt the spirit of Christmas charity, of course, but they do get stuck in one’s head so dreadfully, don’t they?”

Crowley nodded. He wished he’s invented Songs Getting Stuck In Your Head. Aziraphale, he’d noticed, had been humming “Last Christmas” under his breath all evening, while Crowley’s brain had been repeating  “Sans Day Carol” for the better part of a week by now. “How was the choir this year?” he asked.

“Wondrous, my dear. It always makes my heart soar to watch as people move beyond their petty grievances, the quarrels of their mundane lives, and come together to make a music that is grander than any one of them alone.” He paused. “Also, Mrs. Rutherford finally started buying biscuits at the store rather than trying to make them herself, which is a distinct improvement. How were the fruitcakes and the mistletoe?”

“Oh, amusing as ever. I’m thinking of branching out into children’s Christmas plays next year. Or Buying Gifts For Relatives You Don’t Like, it’s really an area of overlooked potential, I think.”

“Well, best of luck.”

“Same to you, with the whole Good Tidings of Great Joy thing.”

“Thanks, dear.”

And snow began to fall outside the bookshop window as Aziraphale and Crowley counted down to the new year. Well, it was technically closer to sleet or slush. But it was beautiful anyway.

* * *

 

(1) Probably it had never been as nice as Aziraphale remembered it. Angels, despite having technically perfect memories, are nonetheless capable of nostalgia.

(2) Crowley.

(3) Despite the prophecies going back centuries.

(4) And in the two thousand-odd years that followed, no one had ever apologized to him.

(5) The fire department said the building really ought to only hold 150 people, but Aziraphale never seemed to notice that. 


End file.
